“While there is some difference of opinion between different Flat Earth groups, I think it's fair to say that the overall belief is that sustained spaceflight is impossible, or at the very least cost-prohibitive,” Pete Svarrior, a spokesperson for the Flat Earth Society told The Daily Beast.

The Flat Earth Society is one of the best-known, apparently serious groups of people who claim Earth is not round, but a disk, maybe one covered with a dome. The flat earth movement has seen a surge in attention in recent years, fueled in part by several minor celebrity adherents, and in part by its convergence with other extreme-fringe conspiracy theories. Flat eartherism, already popular among a small set of conservative evangelicals, now crops up semi-regularly in forums for QAnon, an unhinged pro-Trump conspiracy that has led to multiple armed conflicts.

Which makes Trump’s proposed Space Force an open question for pro-Trump flat earthers, many of whom reject NASA as a deep state plot to dupe the masses into believing the world is round. Svarrior’s set of flat earthers believe that, even if manned spacecraft made their way into orbit (manned spacecraft are currently in orbit), photographic evidence of a round Earth wouldn’t change their minds.

“They would only be able to observe the illuminated portion of the Earth, which would be roughly circular in shape,” he said. “Hypothetically, this shouldn't be conclusive either way.”

I'm waiting for somebody with good video editing skills to snip a clip from Far Out Space Nuts and put Trump's head on Chuck McCann's body (Bob Denver is too thin). Which head to put on Denver? Jr? Kushner? Cohen?

I'm waiting for somebody with good video editing skills to snip a clip from Far Out Space Nuts and put Trump's head on Chuck McCann's body (Bob Denver is too thin). Which head to put on Denver? Jr? Kushner? Cohen?

And here’s the secret of the way the scam works. A good half of the Pentagon budget is given back out to military contractors. It is, in essence, corporate welfare on a huge scale. Officers who retire often form provision companies on getting out. They know what their former colleagues need and want, and their former colleagues will take the call when they make the offer. The retirees with their new companies take the profits.

Many of the former officers you see interviewed on CNN and other cable news shows are actually making money off wars even as the opine on them, and despite print press exposes, CNN et al. have never apologized for the practice, never identified biased guests, and never acknowledged it is happening.

The US military doesn’t need to be nearly so large if it is a defense force and if it were run like a public sector corporation (think Reneault) instead of as a way to enrich cronies. Nor does “defense” spending create many jobs, and the ones it creates are way more expensive to the public than most others.